Do You Want Fries With That?

Over half of U.S. jobs created this year are in Food or Retail

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Employment Situation report, summing up the most recent government figures on employment in the United States. Investors use this information to gauge the health of the domestic economy, paying close attention to the unemployment rate, nonfarm payrolls, labor force participation, and wage growth.

While this report gets dissected to death each month, we thought we’d take a more nuanced view by profiling the two sectors that have supplied the lion’s share of job growth in 2016 so far.

Numbers in Q1

In the first three months of 2016, a total of 589,000 private sector jobs were created.

A variety of sectors contributed to this growth, including industries such as construction and healthcare. In particular, however, it was the “Accommodation and Food Services” and “Retail Trade” segments that added the most new workers. In combination, these sectors are the source for 51% of all new U.S. jobs in 2016 to date.

While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with job growth in these sectors, an important point from an investment perspective must be made. Typically speaking, these are jobs that pay on the lower end of the spectrum, and they do little to move the needle on making the overall economy richer and more diversified.

Sector Comparison

To get an idea of the jobs that are being created, here are the five most popular positions in each segment:

Accommodation and Food Services

• Waiters and waitresses (18.9%)
• Cooks (16.1%)
• Food service managers (7.6%)
• Cashiers (7.4%)
• Food preparation (6.6%)

Retail Trade

• Retail salespersons (19.7%)
• Firstline supervisors (16.2%)
• Cashiers (13.3%)
• Stock clerks (7.0%)
• Customer service (4.6%)

Here’s also the salary and age profile of each segment, as well as a comparison to the Manufacturing sector, which lost 29,000 jobs in March.

Accommodation and Food Services

• Average age: 32.7
• Average salary: $20,495
• Share making <$20k per year: 63.8%

Retail Trade

• Average age: 38.5
• Average salary: $31,460
• Share making <$20k per year: 46.6%

Manufacturing

• Average age: 43.7
• Average salary: $56,264
• Share making <$20k per year: 15.8%

Data in this section comes from DataUSA, using information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau for 2014.